


Someplace Beneath the Stars

by Em Tee (sultrybutdamaged)



Category: Starless - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Homecoming, Other, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrybutdamaged/pseuds/Em%20Tee
Summary: "I belong with you," he said.  "Just as you belong with me."
Relationships: Khai/Zariya (Starless)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Books of Yule





	Someplace Beneath the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estelraca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/gifts).



> Here is my entry for the 2020 Book of Yule Exchange. I was so excited to write something for this underrated book. I hope you enjoy it.

The whole world had changed, but the Fortress of the Winds was the same.

Or so Khai told her as they approached the mountain.Zariya watched as it came closer, an enormous edifice grown out of the desert floor, grey and craggy and worn by the swirling winds, as far as possible from the grandeur of Anamuht’s Temple back in Merabaht.The Purging Fire had given her flame to Zarkhoum, and their people had built gilded walls around it to keep it safe, had preserved and protected and hidden it away; the Scouring Wind had carved his own temple into the walls of the mountains, and the Brotherhood had made a home of what the god gave them.As different as they could be, the Sacred Twins.

As different as their avatars were, she’d once thought, back when Khai had first come to her, her barely-tamed hawk, honed into a weapon against any enemy and then trapped within the walls of the women’s quarters so that he could stay by her side.Back then, Zariya had seen the discrepancies between them and wondered what the gods had been thinking to create them as soul’s twins.She had wondered what she had to offer Khai.That was before she’d understood either the Purging Fire or her own strength.

She reminded herself of that strength as she studied the mountain.Home to a Brotherhood all of men, a world as alien to her now as the women’s quarters had once been to Khai.Not for the first time, she felt a flicker of envy for Khai’s _bhazim_ identity, his ability to walk between these worlds with ease.But no, she thought, remembering the way he’d stared around with suspicious eyes in those first weeks in the House of the Ageless, his discomfort in the baths and the stripped-bare look on his face when he’d seen himself in women’s clothes.Ease was not the word. _Courage_. 

Well, he called her lion-hearted, so she should try to have as much courage as he’d shown when he entered her world.Zariya pulled her eyes away from the approaching mountain and turned her attention to her companion, unsurprised when she found his dark eyes on her.“It’s like I thought,” she said.“Just like you described, my heart.”

“More like Liko of Koronis described, I’d guess,” Khai said with a wry smile.“I’m not much of a story-teller.”

“You sell yourself short,” Zariya said, though it was true that she’d read everything she could get her hands on about the Fortress when she was a child, trying to imagine the life her soul’s twin had been leading.None of those volumes had matched the way Khai spoke about his training, or the brothers, or the towering column of swirling sand that was Pahrkun the Scouring Wind.“We’ll make a story-teller of you yet.”

That was what they had decided to do, a few nights ago when they’d contemplated the whole world now open to them.To travel the world, to collect the stories of the now-departed gods and preserve them.To capture in words some small part of the terrible, beautiful world they’d traveled through, and changed forever. 

It wasn’t far from the dream Zariya had once had of sailing the seas as a prophesy hunter.It was, she thought, probably a good deal further from what Khai had dreamed of.

If he’d dreamed.They’d shared every fear and sorrow and childhood grievance in a great rush when they’d first met, desperate to fill in the gaps in the bond that simply laying eyes on each other had created, but Khai had never mentioned dreams.Only duties. _Honor beyond honor._ Only her.

She shifted uncomfortably on her mount, a lingering concern flashing through her mind.

Khai noticed - of course he did, Khai noticed everything, and especially when it concerned her.“Are you sore?” he asked.“We can rest.”

“I’m alright,” she said, and kept herself from making an impatient face when his eyebrows drew together like he didn’t believe her.She was sore, but it was the good kind of pain she’d only recently discovered, the kind that came from pushing her body far beyond the limits she’d once believed she had, finding out how much it could do.Another glance at Khai made her remember the others ways she’d used her body recently, and she flushed.

“I cannot believe it took me so long to realize the benefits of riding,” she said, to distract herself from blushing.She stroked the horse’s neck beneath her.“I could have had four strong legs beneath me all this time.”

“I can imagine your mother’s face if you rode a pony through the House of the Ageless,” he said, poker-faced, and Zariya laughed. 

“Indeed, my darling.”

It took longer than it should have for Zariya to realize they were no longer alone in the desert.Pahrkun might be gone, but there was still wind out here, a constant swirl that raised sand to grit her eyes and dry her mouth no matter how tightly she would her headscarf, and so her vision was blurred.The mountain fortress wavered in her sight, sometimes a stark form rising against the hot sun, sometimes a mere shadow, shades darker than the sand.It was only as they approached the final passage to the entrance that Zariya realized there were people ranged along the fortress’s natural walls, men of all ages, most with the weather-beaten faces and rough white garments of the desert. 

“My brothers,” Khai said.There was a world of unexpected emotion in his voice.

Impulsively, Zariya reached across the distance between their mounts to grab his hand.As always when she touched him these days, she felt the flicker of Anamuht’s fire beneath her skin, and saw the silver swirls of the goddess’s mark shimmer.Tiny sparks danced where their fingers touched.“Thank you, my heart,” she said.“For bringing me to your home.”

“My home is with you.”The words came automatically, but she still saw him smile.

“And mine with you.”It had been months since Papa-ka-hondras, since she’d been relieved of the old sickness that had kept her chest tight for years, but she still felt her breathing ease at his words.It was absurd, after he had traveled to the end of the world and faced death at her side, to worry that he might be tempted away by the promise of home.It was beneath her.Certainly Merabaht and the House of the Ageless had done nothing to make her wish to leave him.But then Khai had had a true home out here in the desert, in a way she never had.

_My home is with you_ , she repeated to herself as they road up the path to the Fortress.

There were a dozen brothers waiting for them, all with _yakhan_ and _kopar_ at their sides, no signs of rank or prestige among them, and yet it was easy for Zariya to pick out the Seer as it would have been to name her sister, Princess Nizara, as the Priestess of Anamuht back home.A man you would never look at twice, Khai had once described him, and at the time Zariya hadn’t understood what he meant.How could a man be so ordinary that you couldn’t describe him?But now she saw it in the small, unassuming man who stood at the center of the priests, whose face she could lose instantly in a crowd.It was less a question of looks and more one presence; the one she knew was Brother Yarit projected in his stance, the fold of his hands and the set of his shoulders, that he was nothing worth looking at.

And still… Zariya met his eyes and shivered, not afraid, but one who had been touched by the gods recognizing another. 

“Brother Yarit, Seer,” she said and saluted. 

“Your Highness Princess Zariya,” he said, and returned the gesture.“Welcome to the Fortress of the Winds.”His eyes slid past her to her companion, and he grinned.“And Khai!I hoped to see you back among us one day, but I didn’t dare expect it.”

His tone said that he was joking, but Zariya still shivered. _He saw everything,_ Khai had explained to her once, _but he never understood how it all fit together._ Zariya had never believed their mission to the end of the world was guaranteed a success, but it was different to hear a Seer say that he had not been sure they would return.

Khai slid from his horse, handing the reins to a boy a few years younger than them, then turned to help her down.After a week of travel, this part at least had become easier:she reached down and let him take her in his arms, shifting her legs free from the saddle as she slid down.Khai’s hands lingered only a moment on her waist as she stood, catching her balance, before he handed her canes over and stepped back, but that moment might as well have been a year, and left her wishing she could send all these priests away, dispense with formalities and demand to know where they were going to sleep tonight.

Embarrassing, she told herself, that you have so little control, but she couldn’t help a flash of delight when she saw Khai’s cheeks darken as he turned away.

—

They dined with the Brothers, at a long table with Brother Yarit at the head and Zariya and Khai beside him in places of honor.If there was any order or hierarchy to the way the other Brothers sat, Zariya couldn’t see it.Khai had told her about the way he’d grown up, with men who were all equal, even the Seer just the first among them, each valued for their skills and what they’d had to teach but not holding power over each other, but it was still strange to Zariya, even after so long away from the House of the Ageless, to sit with these people who all greeted each other as family, who weren’t scheming and jostling for power.She expected the way they treated her with careful respect and a little distance; she was thrown, however, by how easily they welcomed Khai back among them, with gentle teasing and reminiscences.As the evening wore on, there were stories about some of Khai’s childhood exploits, and Zariya relaxed enough to call for the more embarrassing ones and to laugh when her shadow shook his head, equal parts horrified and amused.She’d always had a gift for making people comfortable, and she wielded it here just as easily as she had anywhere else, but she couldn’t stop being aware of her differences.Royalty where these were mostly desert folk who cared little about the House of the Ageless.Sitting with her canes tucked beneath her feet while they were warriors with weapons always in reach. 

_Immortal, maybe, while they were mortal,_ was perhaps what she should have thought, but instead what came to mind was _a woman, while they are -_

She glanced at Khai, smiling in his quiet way at some story being told, his shoulders relaxed the way they’d never been in her home, and unease ran through her.

After dinner, they met with Brother Yarit in his private study.If the Brothers as a whole were overwhelming to Zariya, the Seer put her at ease.It wasn’t just his unassuming appearance; it was the way, left alone with her and Khai, he dropped all formality, pouring mint tea for them himself, bringing out a low stool for her to sit on though no one had mentioned the need.He settled on his knees in front of her, and Khai took up his customary position close at her side.

“Well, I guess you have a story to tell,” he said.

They told it, trading off between them.Zariya found it easier to let Khai tell the parts of the story that had taken place in Merabaht; he was the one who had gone out into the streets that Yarit knew, while the Seer had little experience with the Palace.When it came time to talk about their adventures on the sea, Khai began deferring to her, and so it was Zariya who ended up relating most of their time with the Elehuddin.Neither of them said much of Miasmus at all, except to recite the bare facts of what had happened there.Of that day spent on the barren shore while the gods rose into the sky, or their long, despairing journey home, they said nothing at all.

When they were finished, Brother Yarit was quiet for a long time, his eyes distant.Zariya wondered if he was having a vision, but when she glanced down at Khai, her shadow seemed to read her mind and shake his head.“Brother,” he said softly, drawing the Seer’s attention.“Can you tell us how much of this story you saw?”

Brother Yarit gave a rough laugh, a startlingly light sound after the solemn conversation.“All of it and none,” he said.“The pieces, now that I understand them, all fit together, but I didn’t understand them at the time at all.”

“If this, then that,” Khai murmured, something she’d heard him say many times.

“Yes.”Brother Yarit smiled at his former pupil, then turned his attention to her.Zariya didn’t see anything of the god-touched Seer in him now, just a man, wise and unsure at once.“I will say, I didn’t anticipate you at all,” he said.“Even knowing what I did… you are a surprise in every way.”

Zariya laughed, unexpectedly touched.“To myself as much as anyone else,” she said, stretching out her hand with the marks of Anamuht’s Fire still upon them.

“Not to me,” Khai said, and took her hand, curling his own callused fingers around it.“I always knew what you could be.”

“Yes,” Brother Yarit said, studying them.“A surprise.”

__

Neither of them slept through the night anymore.They took turns with their nightmares, Zariya thought ruefully when Khai’s restless moves and murmured words woke her; if they could coordinate better, then they might at least get a full night’s rest once in every two nights.She pushed herself up on one arm and reached across the sleeping mat to touch his shoulder, shaking it lightly.Anyone else would have risked his yakhan at their throat, but even in the deepest sleep, she knew Khai would recognize her.“Wake up, my darling,” she murmured.“It’s a dream, that’s all.”

It wasn’t, of course, but there was no point in reminding him that every dark image that passed through either of their heads had been real, once.

Khai came awake all at once, like he always did.Zariya heard the shift in his breathing as he tried to bring himself under control.Her throat tightened with the urge to comfort him, and she thought that if they’d been back in Merabaht, or out in the desert, or on the Elehuddin ship far out to sea, she would have.But it was different, somehow, in the Fortress; he was both her Khai and not, here, and she didn’t know what he wanted.

After a moment, he rolled over, and though there were tears clearly on his face, he was composed.

“Lirios?” she asked, because it always was.Zariya had a whole range of horrors to fill her nightmares, but for Khai it always came back to the Quick and the sacrifice that Khai would always, in some small way, believe had been stolen from him.The thought made her shudder; if she let herself think about Khai making that leap into the Maw in Lirios’s place, she might have a whole new set of nightmares.

To her surprise, he shook his head.“Papa-ka-hondras,” he murmured.“I dreamt of you screaming.”

“Ah.”Oddly, Zariya never dreamt of that one; it had been a horror, but once the last cramps had faded from her belly, the horror had faded.Now Zariya was quite sure she would have endured a hundred more such “cures” if each had given her what the first had: the ability to survive her quest, to stand and face the darkness, and now to continue at her beloved’s side.But Khai would never see it that way, any more, she supposed, than Zariya could ever be happy at the injuries he took defending her.“I’m alright, beloved,” she said.“I’m right here.” 

“I know.”He slid closer to her, and she let herself be pulled down until her head rested on his shoulder, her arms loose around his waist.Neither of them would go back to sleep right away, Zariya knew from experience.

She gazed up around them at the little of the room that showed in the dim light.Brother Yarit had given them Khai’s old cell with a slight hesitation that Zariya had breezed past with a thanks, not about to be embarrassed by a relationship that defied anything the Seer could imagine.It was a tiny room, the whole thing less than half the size of her childhood sleeping chamber, and mostly bare, only the simple mat and rugs, lamps on niches carved in the wall and a narrow slit window through which she could see the sparkle of the new stars.She tried to imagine Khai growing up in this place, sleeping here every night for most of his life.Even though Khai had never hidden anything - well, all but one thing - from her, being in his space felt different, like seeing sides of him she hadn’t imagined were there.She wondered if it had been like that for him, sleeping at the foot of her childhood bed, inhabiting the women’s quarters beside her.

“Did you miss it here, my darling?” she asked, cutting into the quiet.

Khai stirred beneath her.“The Fortress?You know I did.”She could almost feel the surprise through his body.Every night she thought she could not be closer to Khai and every morning she woke with a new awareness of him.And yet…

“I know you missed the Brothers, and being in a place that wasn’t as strange to you as Merabaht.I just…”She pushed herself up on her arm again, shoving her braids back so she could look down into his serious, beloved face.“I never thought of this as the place where you belonged, just as the place you came from.Does that sound silly, my heart?”

“No,” he said.“I belong with you.Just as you belong with me.”

It relieved a little of the tension running through her.“I dressed you up in silks,” she blurted out.“I put kohl around your eyes and made you go out with your face covered - “

“Zariya.”She fell quiet immediately.Zariya had grown up in a world of casual endearments,unmeant affection, but nothing had ever had as much meaning as the way he said her name.Khai sat up and grabbed her hands.“You didn’t make me do anything.You introduced me to another side of myself.And, yes, it’s not one that I think I’ll ever fully feel at home in, but what is this all about?”

“I saw you tonight with the men,” Zariya said.“And it’s not that I don’t think of you as one of them, because I do, you are every bit my beloved warrior, but I saw you and I wondered.If you had been home here in a way that I didn’t understand, and if I - if I took you from that.”

She thought of those days on the Elehuddin ship, even the terrible ones at the end, maybe especially the terrible ones.The way the group of them had clung to each other, and Zariya had thought that these people understood her like no one else ever would again.For the first time, she’d thought that she understood what home was.

But maybe that hadn’t been a lesson Khai needed to learn.

She tugged at one hand, intending to pull herself free and wipe at the tears that had gathered, foolishly, in her eyes, but Khai released her and brushed them away himself with a gentle touch.“Zariya,” he said again, very softly.“ _You are my home._ No, listen - yes, I missed the Fortress, and the Brothers.A part of me will always love this place.But I was not my true self - _bhazim_ , shadow, _beloved_ \- until I met you.And being with you, here or in Merabaht or out across the sea, is the only place I will ever be home.”

She laughed a little shakily.“So you’re saying I’m being foolish and worried about nothing?”

He paused, then leaned in and kissed her.“Yes,” he said.“But in the most loving way.”

They lay back down, entangled again, and watched the stars through the slit in the far wall.“I want us to have a home someday,” Zariya said.“I want to see the whole world, and hunt every story down, but then I want to find a place to settle that is ours, for us and our friends and, and our family, if we have one some day.Someplace under the stars that is yours and mine.”

She felt him smile against her shoulder.“I would like that very much.”

  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  



End file.
